Killarney...Reliving Childhood Memories

I had a late start for the camping season this year. But that is OK because I prefer late August camping since it is still warm and there are fewer bugs usually. Well that's the theory anyways. Someone didn't let the weatherman in on this little secret though because the warm weather was pretty scarce this trip. But more on the weather later. 

For this trip I partnered up with my sister, Heather. We packed up the car on this sunny Sunday morning and headed out to our intended destination of Killarney Provincial Park.  We had been here before, but it was when we were kids, many decades ago. Our memories were that of it being one of our favourite parks. We were curious if it would live up to our memories of it or if we had painted the picture prettier in our heads. You know how it is; when you have a wonderful so called memory of a babbling brook in your head and you get there and find out it was only just a ditch with dirty old water running out in it and your childhood memory is ruined. My fingers were crossed that the memories we had  painted were real. 

Along the way we stopped to top up the car with gas and popped into the store to pick up last minute snacks. That's when Heather found a Coke bottle with my name on it. No really, I literally mean with my name on it!  This is the second summer that Coke has manufactured bottles with all sorts of names on them. I had been looking since they started last year and had never found one. I had sifted through countless coolers and display boxes looking for my name and today was finally the day we found it.  I was a happy camper! (Pun intended). So it was, that even from the get go we had a feeling that this would be a fantastic trip. 

It is a bit of a drive off the highway to get to the park but the scenery is nice and the fact that it is so far away from any major thoroughfare means that you can't hear the traffic from the park and it is very peaceful.

We arrived at the park office and  went in to register for a site. There were more people in the office than we had expected, but since the office doubles as a store I figured that most of the people were just shopping around. We waited in line for our turn to registered. There was one other lady in front of us and she clearly was not an experienced camper. It wasn't her attire that gave it away. It was the question she asked the park staff...."What do I do if I see a bear?"  My sister and I tried to stifle our giggles because we knew she was serious and in all honesty it was a very good question for an inexperienced camper to ask. So kudos to you new girl for asking and sorry for the giggles. Not even sure why we found it amusing. I think it is just because we have grown up around campers and just assume that if  you are at a provincial park you know what you are doing. We forget sometimes that this is obviously not the case for everyone and that it is better to ask before hand than to find yourself in a a situation where you wished you would have asked.  So we waited while the girl at the desk explained that if you come across a bear in this area that you should make a bunch of noise because the bears would rather avoid you than confront you and you don't want to take them by surprise. Also to make sure all your food is put away in the trunk of your car and never have it in your tent. If you have any food on you at the time of the encounter, to drop it and walk (not run) away making sure that you don't turn your back on it until you are sure that you are clear of it. And that running or climbing a tree is of no use because they can out run and out climb you any day of the week.  (As an aside note, what the girl at the desk did not mention that Grizzly bears, out west are a different breed of bear entirely and can behave differently than black bears in certain situations.  More on that can be found here: http://www.bearsmart.com/play/bear-encounters/ ) . Of course all this talk of bears made Heather want to see one while we were there. 

Soon it was our turn and got up to the girl at the desk and explained that we wanted to stay for 3 nights. Normally we would let the office know that we had arrived and then we would go and pick a site and then register it. However, the girl explained that there were only 16 sites left in the park at that moment (and there were people in line behind us. So she started circling the available sites and recommended number 81 to us. She pointed out that to be on the safe side we might consider registering that site right now and if we didn't like it then we could always choose something else and come back to the office to change it. So that is what we did. 

Before we left the office we asked about the various hiking trails because that was something we intended to do while we were there. We were given the lo-down on a few but the one that stuck out most for Heather was the 80 km trail, called La Cloche Silhouette Trail that usually takes about 7 - 10 days to complete. We didn't have that kind of time this time around so we decided that maybe next year we would try it. Her second favourite was "The Crack" (which is actually part of the La Cloche) which is a trail that goes up  a four meter wide divide that was created when the rock face cracked into two parts thousands of years ago. It sounded interesting enough to me, but I was just eager to get to our site and get set up. So off we went to find site number 81.

The way the park is laid out it is pretty much just a long road with little areas that branched off of it with about 5 or 6 sites on each branch. Each branch was given an animal name. Ours was called "Ground Hog"  (but by the time we left we figured that they should rename our section to "Raccoon" and I am sure that you can imagine why). 

When we arrived we were very surprised to see that our site was at the bottom of a hill and that there was a wall of rock cliff along one side on top of which was a huge fallen tree with it's whole root system uprooted. We couldn't even drive our car down to our site and our first thought was "what if it rains? We are going to be camping in a swimming pool!"  We wondered if the girl at the desk was crazy and just what was she thinking? 

 But then on further inspection we realized that it really was in a nice quiet and very pretty spot and that the rock facing was actually protecting us from the rain to some degree. And we didn't mind the trek up the hill to the car.  As Heather looked around she said "I think that this is actually the very campsite we stayed at when we were kids! I remember this place!" And so the deal was sealed and we decided to stay and we began to set up camp.  (Any of the sites in "Ground Hog" are recommended but if you choose site # 79 then you may want to make sure that you only have a small tent because the rocks and roots make for a difficult time in finding a nice surface to set up a tent). 

At first we thought that we were in a nice private site with no neighbours. Part of the plan was to come camping after the weekend was over to miss that weekend rush of people you often get. So when our campsite neighbours showed up on site number 80 about an hour later we were a little disappointed at first. It was a man and his two teen aged daughters and we thought "oh no, now it's going to get loud and rowdy". But to our surprise we couldn't have had better campsite neighbours if we had hand picked them ourselves.

Once we were all set up the next order of business was to locate the restrooms. So off we went down the road to look for them. It was wee bit of a walk but finally we found them and they were quite impressive as far as camping bathroom standards go.  

It consisted of a skylight over head, flush toilet, two sets of grab bars, mats outside the door, running water (cold) to wash your hands, nice clean, shiny, white plastic walls like those you find in a shower, and even a baby change table. 

The only thing it seemed to be missing was a place to dry your hands (neither paper towels or an air blower) and a mirror.  Instead of a mirror was a notice posted up that talked about keeping the bathroom clean. I suppose if something has to take the place of a mirror then this is just as good of a replacement as anything. At least it is helping to educate the camping public. 

It took us about a day and a half before we figured out that this was actually the wheel chair accessible washroom and that was why it was so nice. The other washrooms in the park were more like your typical park out houses with no flush toilet and smelling the way the outhouses usually do.  However, they did have a mirror and, unlike any other park I have ever seen, they had the added convenience of an extra roll of toilet paper situated on the top of the wall between the two stalls.

Needless to say we continued to use the wheelchair accessible one for the remainder of our stay, despite having to wait in line much of the time to use it. It was closer and was just generally cleaner.

Just outside the bathroom we discovered a bulletin board with some interesting postings on it. 
The first was an ad letting you know that they had hot coffee available for sale at the park office. I guess that is for those who can't get their fire started fast enough in the morning or have perhaps run out of butane or something. At any rate, I thought it was a nice convenience for those that drink coffee. There was also a posting for something I have not seen any other park do before (at least not yet).  It suggested that you bring your camera or phone to the park office where they had a dock station where you could contribute your photos that of wildlife that you have taken in the park and add to their collection. This helps them to keep track of all the plants and animals in the park as well as helping  them to study their numbers and and other things about them. I thought this was a pretty great idea since campers can help cover such a large area. 

But the posting we were the most interested in was the one for the upcoming events in the park. We found out that the next day there would be a "Connecting With The Land Guided Hike" at 10 a.m. at the Chickanishing Trail.  We are not usually ones for guided hikes and generally prefer to do self guided trails, but this one sounded different and we put it on our list of things to do for the next day. 

Next step was to go back up to the office to get some wood for our campfire. While we were up there we saw this beautiful black butterfly. As far as I know, this is a White Admiral butterfly. 

Before getting supper started we decided to do a little exploring of the landscape around us. There were many different croppings of rock faces. 

Of course the one rock face in particular we wanted to climb was the one directly above our campsite. Our tents looked very small down below us. 

At around 6:00 pm it started to rain. Not a down pour, just enough to make cooking over a campfire more difficult than you really want it to be . But we started the fire just the same and cooked ourselves some pork chops and baked potatoes for supper. 

We had just finished cleaning up and putting all the food away when we heard a rustling in the woods. It was only about 7 pm and there was plenty of daylight left so we were very surprised to see a raccoon pop in to visit at such an early hour.  We didn't have any food available to him so he didn't stay very long. 

We spent the rest of the evening playing Yahtzee before turning in a bit earlier than we normally would have. We wanted to be sure to be up  in the morning to get to our guided hike on time.